I grew bored of strategic games and set aside Awakening for a while; only picked it back up a few days ago.

Perhaps I'm losing my touch, but despite Hard mode being described as 'for experienced series players' I'm finding it a lot more difficult than previous games. The latter levels were nearly unplayable and I barely scraped by the endgame - the only reason I made it is because Chrom Aether'ed twice during the finishing blows. Guess I'll go back to Shadow Dragon and hone my non-existent skills.

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither." C.S. LewisAvatar done by unknown artist.

My favorite FF game since X. Gameplay is way better than 12 and 13 (especially 13, because I HATE the battle system in 13), and I like the real time KH style battle system better than ATB, though I think I like X's true turn based system better, and both sphere grid and materia were better leveling systems than the ascension grid, and the magic system in FFXV is the most out of place in the series, even comparing it to 8 and 1. I like that it's more open world (at least the first half) since I've been getting into those kind of games lately, and I love the characters (except Gladio post Altissia... Can't stand him after that.)The story is lacking because of the DLC nonsense, which I'm not happy about, but it's not as lacking and unfinished feeling as MGS5, and unlike MGS5 they actually DO plan on finishing the story (via the aforementioned DLC). I would have paid another 60 bucks to properly finish MGS5, but that won't happen now.

I also watched Brotherhood, which I loved. I really want to see more with these characters but I don't like how exploitative the current "season pass" style system is...

It'll take longer to place it properly in my FF ranking, but I know it's above 1, 12, and 13 for me for certain. The only games I really don't like are 1 and 13, so it's not like I hate 12, it's just I was really put off by the MMO style battle system. 13 is just SO TERRIBLE, though. And 1 is boring, and has almost not story to speak of. I'll be able to say in a year how it compares to X, which is the story based game I spent the most time on in my entire life (the only games I played more were Civ 2 and Sim Tower).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evcNPfZlrZs Watch this movie なう。 It's legal, free... And it's more than its premise. It's not saying Fast Food is good food. Just watch it.Legend of Crying Bronies: Twilight's a Princess

This is from a while back, actually, but back when I was still living in Okinawa I had started playing through Pokemon Crystal on emulator, and then had set aside for a few years, and a while ago (maybe the middle to end of last year?) I finally beat it (all of Johto and Kanto, but I didn't complete the Pokedex).

At the time, I didn't think I would have been able to get through it without a fast forward button.

But that said, it was really fun. It was similar enough to Red and Blue to satisfy that nostalgia, but it also, of course, had a lot more to it--more Pokemon, more gyms, more trainers, more features. I also noticed that it seems like it's possible to use a wider variety of Pokemon types from early on in the game; before even the second gym you can catch water types, a ghost type (Ghastly), psychic types, and rock types, whereas it seems like in the 1st gen. games it was all just normal, flying, and bug types in the wild for a while there.

In fact, I enjoyed this game so much that I actually started to play through it again . . . but I had a friend who wanted to play a video game together with me and we ended up playing Heart Gold and Soul Silver (I am playing Soul Silver, in Japanese).

Now, having experienced the DS version, I am pretty sure I never want to go back to the Game Boy version. The DS version just streamlines and gets rid of a lot things in the GB version that were just annoying, like getting rid of the limits to how many phone numbers you could record and how many items you could store in your pack and making PC box Pokemon strorage a lot easier to organize. For the GB version, I was thinking, "I couldn't make it through this game without a fast forward button," but the DS version does have a couple of things that are helpful in speeding things up, like the running shoes and the ability to turn off battle animations. So, grinding is still a chore, but not so much that I can't live without a fast forward button.

Some further thoughts:

I understand that with there now being a huge amount of different types of berries, it wouldn't be possible for a player to go around gathering them all from trees, but I can't get over my feeling that it is weird that berries don't grow on trees anymore and you have to buy them or exchange shards for them instead.

I also can't quite get over my disappointment that by the time it's possible to get a dragon type (Dratini) it's so late in the game that it's not very practical to level it up and use it in your team. Ice and dark types are also a bit difficult to get, though there are tons of Pokemon that can use ice and dark moves despite not being that type.

I'm really impressed by how deep you can go into this game if you want to. For example, when I was growing up playing Pokemon Red, I didn't bother with non-damaging moves whatsoever and just used leveling up and sheer brute force to win battles. Playing Pokemon as an adult, though, I find it really interesting how many different strategic things there are that you can do (for example, using Provoke to prevent that Miltank from going to sleep to recover its HP) and am enjoying trying to win battles using type strategies while my Pokemon are at a similar or sometimes slightly lower level than the gym leaders'. Besides that there are all the things you can do with Pokemon breeding, egg moves and so on, things that I mostly don't have time for but where you can do a lot of interesting things if you have the time and patience for it.

The games are really feature-rich, and even have a lot of new features that were not present in G/S/C. Some of these I am excited about, like having rematches with gym leaders. However, I find that I just cannot bring myself to care about completing certain sidequests like catching all of the unowns, or completing the Pokedex (way too much work).

Having someone to trade with is really awesome not only because of how much more rapidly you can increase your number of Pokedex entries but because of the ridiculously fast growth rate of Pokemon received in trades (150%!)

Having the first Pokemon in your party follow you around as a field sprite that you can talk to in order to see their reactions was also pretty fun, though more so when I first started playing (after that the novelty wore off).

The Pokewalker I can't comment on because I have a used copy of the game and the Pokewalker that came with my game isn't able to sync with the game for some reason.

Overall, this game is so fun that even though currently I have not finished going around and battling all the gym leaders in Kanto, I am already thinking about starting another playthrough, maybe a Nuzlocke or mono-type run.

A great game for just flying around in. The gameplay experience can even be greatly improved by listening to speeches made during the appropriate historical era. It becomes quite immersive, odd though it may seem, when coupled with research into the events of the war as the game presents each major engagement.

...dang, I'm old. Advocating research and reading as an improvement to a video game.

started playing and finished playing the walking dead season 3 this weekend, my Clementine became a "survival strategist". I made some "harsh" choices I guess in the game, but thats probably because Im heavily biased to do things in favor of Clementine.

An ongoing gaming endeavor; Minecraft with the TerraFirmaCraft mod. Never had any exposure to Minecraft until a year ago, it was really fun for the first little bit but got very boring. The mod, however, is agonizing more than boring, can't get past the bronze age. Still, the mod requires some level of thinking and that can be fun--in small doses.

Pokemon Black: Played all the way through (including the post-game and rematch against the Elite Four and Champion).

Pokemon White: Liked the new Pokemon in this gen so much that there were a lot that I had wanted to use but didn't get a chance to, so playing through a second time. Have beaten the Elite Four (the first time) and am currently in the post-game, searching for the sages.

Overall thoughts on Black/White: It doesn't have quite the depth of HGSS (in terms of in-game things like growing and harvesting berries, needing to breed Pokemon in order to complete the Pokedex, the Pokeathlon, having a whole second region to explore, and so on), but the fact that there were no old Pokemon, only new Pokemon, until you beat the Elite Four the first time was really refreshing. I also liked that between battles with your two friends, Team Plasma's machinations, and the gym challenge, there was always something going on keeping the plot moving forward. The plot had more depth than other Pokemon games . . . but they didn't take the concepts very deep really; it is still a children's game. Also, the sound engineering was fantastic! Enjoyed these games and am looking forward to playing Black 2 or White 2, maybe after taking a bit of a break from Pokemon and in particular this gen.Tenchi Souzou (Terranigma): currently playing. This is a really incredible SNES-era action-RPG. You play as a mischievous young man who opens up a Pandora's Box that turn all his villagers into ice, but then in the process of going on a quest to save the villagers he gets caught up in the recreation of the entire world. For example, at the beginning of the story, with each dungeon you complete, a continent (Eurasia, Africa, and so on) reappears on the face of the Earth. Then you revive plants, animals, and so on. I am just partway through the story and don't know where it is ultimately headed in the end, but the concept of the game is fascinating--and the gameplay is also great.

Overall, this game was one of the more philosophical and thought-provoking games I have played, and some of the ideas and emotions evoked by the game have really stuck with me for the last few days, since beating the game. I found the ending to be extremely moving.
SPOILER: Highlight text to read: (Mainly, extremely sad.)

I've been thinking to myself about what it was about the philosophy in the game that worked so well, since the actual ideas that are dealt with are not really all that deep (not compared to, say, reading a book about philosophy or religion or something). I think that a lot of it is just that there is a consistent philosophy that is there all the way from the intro you can watch before going to the start scene to the very end. Also, a lot of different plot elements that at first seem unrelated come together and are (mostly) connected in a way that overall is pretty coherent. (It's still a video game and there are still some things that don't make a whole lot of sense, for example, why does Ark's going through the Towers of Trials have anything to do with unfreezing the people of his village? And also the geography and history have sometimes only a *very* loose connection to the real world. So I'm not talking about the game's references to historical events, but the way the original plot elements come together in the end.)

Graphics and music are both great considering the system (SNES), the action-adventure gameplay was fun, though not extremely challenging, and the story made a real impact. For anyone even remotely interested in retro games, I would highly recommend it.

A review way better than mine (be aware that it does contain spoilers, especially in the second page):

I did actually buy a real Super Famicom cartridge (Japanese edition), and I dug out my real Super Famicom that I bought in Japan and got it hooked up to my transformer and everything . . . and I couldn't get it to send a signal to the TV. The same cable I was using had worked with my N64, so I don't think it is the cable, I think it is the Super Famicom itself that tragically died on me.

So I played on emulator.

But I have the real cartridge and had every intention of playing on my real Super Famicom; it just unfortunately was not working.

(To be honest, though, since I did play on emulator, I found save states to be extremely helpful, since in-game you can only save in towns.)